Microsoft's Terry Myerson, corporate vice president of Windows Phone, talks about the competition. "With iPhone, I sense that it's running out of steam. With iOS, [Apple] just added a fifth row of icons. Android is... kind of a mess. Look at Samsung - there's clearly mutiny going on. The only OEM making money off of Android is Samsung." There's truth to all these statements, which makes it all the more surprising that Microsoft appears to be unable to properly capitalise on them. Sure, WP appears to be doing well in a few select markets, but by no means the kind of success Microsoft and (Nokia) was banking on. Microsoft will pull through. Nokia on the other hand...

Windows 7 would have sold tens of millions during the same period and they wouldn't have had to waste billions of dollars.

Windows 8 has poor reviews compared to 7 and is selling worse than Vista did during the same release period. It's a dud but if you want to play the denial game along with Ballmer then go ahead, you clearly have no shame when it comes to being a Microsoft apologist.

BTW I still haven't met a single .NET developer that has anything positive to say about Windows 8. But I'm sure you will write that off in your mind as not mattering just as Sinofsky did when we pointed out all the negative pre-polls.

The only reason Ballmer still has a job is because he can point to the billions of dollars that come in even though a monkey could run that company thanks to the market lock that Gates created. Oh well you probably have defense work to do here, I shouldn't take up your time.

Windows 7 would have sold tens of millions during the same period and they wouldn't have had to waste billions of dollars.

And when PC sales declined like they did recently? What then? Windows 8 is a forward facing product. Windows 7 was the same formula they've always used.

Microsoft redefined the PC segment with Windows 8 to include touch devices and hybrids. Without Windows 8, Microsoft would be relegated to an ever decreasing market segment with no way out.

Windows 8 has poor reviews compared to 7 and is selling worse than Vista did during the same release period. It's a dud but if you want to play the denial game along with Ballmer then go ahead, you clearly have no shame when it comes to being a Microsoft apologist.

That's only bad if you buy into the notion that Vista sales were bad, which isn't the case. I'd be extremely happy if Windows 8 was adopted as much as Vista was.

BTW I still haven't met a single .NET developer that has anything positive to say about Windows 8. But I'm sure you will write that off in your mind as not mattering just as Sinofsky did when we pointed out all the negative pre-polls.

You know that over 80% of the apps on the Windows Store are written in C# and .NET, right?

The whole "I speak for every .NET developer" bullshit that you keep spouting off about gets old fast. You're an extremely niche kind of developer, becoming even more niche by the day. And that's great for you, if you want to do that forever for an OS paradigm which further fades into irrelevancy, but it doesn't really entitle you to speak much on current or future technology. Especially technology you have not spent a day using.

Simple explanation. 10s of millions of copies for Windows is a failure. Not because the absolute number is small, but because it's Windows. There are a shitload of articles comparing the uptake of Vista, 7 and 8. Most of them come to a conclusion that 8 has lower uptake than Vista, which was acknowledged to be a dud by Microsoft.

Its actually not so bad, I just didn't want to straight up quote licensing figures because its not a 1:1 correlation to user installs.

I'm not aware of any figure for Vista during the same time period, which would give a much clearer picture of the difference.

However these things are dumb to obsess over, given the elongated upgrade cycles on PCs. There could be plenty of reasons why right now, sales are softer than historically, but that doesn't necessarily mean it will remain like that forever. I think the factors are fairly external to Microsoft.

"PC shipments dropped by 14% in the first quarter of this year...As IDC pointed out, it was the single biggest year-over-year drop since the company began tracking PC sales in 1994.

"Hidden in IDC's analysis was an unusual assertion; namely, that Windows 8 had not only not helped PC sales, but actually depressed them.

"When Win 8 came out, we bought a test machine with the new OS loaded on it, fairly confident that we'd need it for testing the inevitable batch of soon-to-arrive Metro apps. But these apps have not materialized... that Win8 test machine has been a long experiment in frustration. Microsoft's design decisions, both at the UI level and below, serve to continually get in our way... We shall shortly strip off Win8 and replace it Windows 7.

"Win8-specific apps have been a non-starter.

"the question is how fast Microsoft can fix their bet."

Pretty much matches my personal experience with the one Win 8 laptop we bought. Never again. Ug.

"PC shipments dropped by 14% in the first quarter of this year...As IDC pointed out, it was the single biggest year-over-year drop since the company began tracking PC sales in 1994.

Do you think an OS that was more like Windows 7 would've change this? I really don't.

"Hidden in IDC's analysis was an unusual assertion; namely, that Windows 8 had not only not helped PC sales, but actually depressed them.

Its useful to separate IDCs cold hard data from their conjecture. This becomes the gray area where I stop really taking what analysts say at face value. If you want to believe them, that's fine with me. I won't. I've been burned by analysts before.

"Win8-specific apps have been a non-starter.

Anyone not currently building a Windows Store app has a broken business model. It is a goldmine. Windows 8 is going to have a market penetration that is incredibly attractive to developers.

Being worried about this is just devoid of all reason. I can personally vouch for the attractive revenue that's to be gained.